All snuffed out?

Look at the literature on senile dementia. Invariably, the first thing to be mentioned about managing these patients is discontinuing statins. Funny. I remember a time not too long ago when statins were hailed as the greatest of human inventions, after sliced bread, of course. Some even advised starting statins prophylactically after turning 40. Besides its coronary vessel-sparing effects, statistics then proposed protection against fractures and reduced incidences of bowel cancers.

Something so good had suddenly gone over to Dark Side? If one loves long enough to be afflicted with dementia, wouldn't he also be having raised cholesterol, cardiac events and the gamut? Now comes the chicken and egg story. Did the statins precipitate loss of neural functions as the whole 3kg brain is nothing more than a lumpen of fat?

Why am I even not surprised that only after two years of decriminalising cannabis, basically to draw in tourist dollars, it has taken a 180-degree turn. The Thai authorities must have realised that it was all wrong. Now, they want to reserve marijuana for medicinal uses only, under prescription and supervision.

This thought has plagued me since childhood. At six, my father brought me to the race club. I remember getting all excited seeing all those majestic horses run. It must have left a strong impression on my young mind that I became excited when a prancing horse reel appeared on our home 16" black-and-white TV. That is when the fight started. My father must have had quite an earful—one for attending the turf club and, second, for bringing a six-year-old there.

Why is it so readily available for everyone if going to the races is wrong? In the same manner, my mother told me that it is wrong to smoke and indulge in intoxicants. But then, I saw both my grandfathers in a perpetual state of inebriety with beedis or other unfiltered cigarettes slipped between their fingers. Well, that is the schizophrenic world we live in, I soon realised.

If we look back at history, mankind has been yo-yo-ing between promoting and banning intoxicants, between party time and prohibition.

When sailors returned from the New World with leaves that could be smoked, people thought that that would be their new plaything. They thought it was fantastic. Then they realised it gave them nasty coughs. By then, it was too late. They were hooked. The natives back in the New World never had this issue as smoking was customary, not a leisurely activity.

When Europeans brought in the technique of distillation of alcohol from the Islamic Empires, the Europeans discovered drunkenness, bumps and cirrhosis. The Aztecs chewed coca leaves to give vitality. Europeans thought heroin was the panacea for all ailments from fibromyalgia to insomnia and alcohol addiction!

When William of Orange wanted to balance his trade with France, he thought the most novel way to do that was for the British to brew their own gin. This led to the Gin Craze and a generation of abandoned children because their mothers were too high to let their babies suckle. To offset this, a gin tax was instituted by the mid-18th century.

People have short memories. By the mid-19th century, in the Victorian Era, it was hip again to be seen in gin palaces. This was compounded by the fact that gin and beer were cleaner than drinking water, as the sanitation system was non-existent in London. The Thames was an open sewage stream. The flamboyant drinking palaces fizzled out under the weight of drunkards and their disorderly behaviour.

Gin Craze in London

Opium was an exotic Eastern product that made its way into Europe. It became a status symbol to be indulging in a bit of weed every now and then. It was customary for artists, writers, poets and even Sherlock Holmes to be on snuff. In their stately duties in the Empire, the British East India Company was actively growing them in India to balance their trade with China. They also flooded the Chinese market with cheap opium and turned the Chinese population into opium addicts, which they successfully did. Their misdeeds finally caught up with them to bite them at their posteriors.

So, it is a cycle. People will hail intoxicants, and then the ill effects will manifest. People will suppress them, only to forget all about them later. Rinse and repeat. We are just caught in the eternal cycle like a dog chasing its tail. For the record, one theory postulates that the inhabitants vanished without a trace because they were all addicted to soma.

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The schizophrenic society...

Das Lehrerzimmer (The Teacher's Lounge, German; 2023)
Director: Ilker Çatak

I feel lucky to have been born at the time I was born. If I were born to be a young adult at the present time, living in a 'so-called' developed nation, there is no absolute reason why I should not be a raving lunatic. The society is broken. Nobody respects anybody anymore. Power is too democratised. People with the most miniature brains are given on a silver platter the right to manage something they cannot handle - their rights. People think they know what they want, but they know diddly-squat. The individual is more important than the community. Personal liberty is more important than the common good of the community. Everyone demands the right to know about everything, but at the same time, there is a compulsion to protect information and privacy.

This schizophrenic environment of today makes eccentricity the default mode of people's response. For every move perceived as offensive by the other, the whole extent of legal jargon is employed. The long arm of the law is utilised for what will make everyone more miserable than they already are. The lawyers are the only ones who seem happy in the process, laughing all the way to the bank.

The society members immerse themselves in a pool of paranoia, low-esteeming and suspicious of their neighbours, and high-strung in a cesspool of siege mentality. 

The movie takes us to a German secondary school where somebody notices money goes missing in the teachers' lounge. The disciplinary teacher decides to run a spot check on students. A student of immigrant background is found to have a lot of money. The student's parents insist that the money was his allowance and accuse the school of racial profiling. Carla, a newbie class teacher of the student, decides to conduct her own investigations. 

She leaves her laptop camera on to record the possible thief. She thinks she possibly recorded a probable offender and confronts that person, Kuhn. Unfortunately, the accused denies everything and turns against her, accusing Carla of invading her colleagues' privacy. Carla reports the situation to her principal, who worsens the problem. She decides to report the case to the police. Kuhn is suspended. 

That soon develops into a living hell for Carla. Kuhn's son, who studies in Carla's class, demands to know what is happening? As investigations are ongoing, the school board decided to keep it under wraps. Soon, all the students' parents insisted on knowing what was happening. The student editorial board demands to know the whole truth. They publish truths and half-truths under the banner of freedom of expression. The school is in mayhem, doing everything except teachers' teaching and students' learning. 

In this modern generation, schools are doing everything except learning. They try to pinpoint scapegoats for all their failures and bring down others for making the level field lopsided, in their minds, of course. 

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